"California was always a model of stark contrasts in the realm of haves and have-nots. But as rents rise and wages stagnate, a majority of L.A.-area renters are paying more than one-third of their income on rent while thousands are paying 50% or more, with no end to these trends in sight.

"Meanwhile, tens of thousands of homeowners in Los Angeles and Orange counties have enjoyed super-low interest rates and seen their equity rise to all-time highs. Roughly one decade after thousands of people lost their homes in the housing crash, 96.4% of Californians with mortgages owe less than their homes are worth."

That's one of the unfortunate aspects of capitalism - uncontrolled price increases. As long as rich people can afford any price for housing, they will not only live in multi-million dollar mansions, they will pay any price to buy up cheaper housing and rent it out. Thus, average wage earners will pretty soon fall into the class of renters because they will no longer be able to afford to buy a home. AND their rents will continue to go up.

Lopez asks: "do those who have prospered owe anything to those who have fallen further behind, including teachers, nurses, laborers and others essential to both our economy and our best definition of community?" I guess not much as government, especially Republican inspired government has as a core principle of its philosophy "devil take the hindermost" or "money talks, shit walks." There is not much sympathy or empathy for those who just aspire to a middle class job and a middle class life style as their parents did. With the financialization of the economy, there is not much hope for those who just do regular jobs, for those who work hard, play by the rules and aspire to home ownership, a secure retirement and sending their kids to college. Those who want to go to college can mire themselves in tons of student loan debt and start out life as debtors. That's the "free market" solution.

There are all kinds of watered down solutions for building "affordable housing" most of which will just enrich real estate developers because government officials don't want to provide it at government (read taxpayer) expense unless some developer can make a bundle off of it. So the short term solution for most people is to just move out of the state to a locale (hint: there are many of them) where housing is cheaper. For government to build affordable housing (read: public housing), they would be betraying one of the primary principles of Ronald Reagan: let the free market prevail. It would be "socialized" housing and America is not about to become socialist even if tens or hundreds of thousands have to live on the streets while those lucky or fortunate enough to have invested in a house 30 or 50 years ago can walk right by them going about their business.

November 12, 2017

California Democrats and affordable-housing advocates are in panic mode over House Republicans’ tax reform bill.

The current version would end separate bond and tax credit programs that helped fund nearly 20,000 affordable units for homeless people, seniors and low-income families statewide last year.

In California, the state has both 9 percent and 4 percent tax credits to allocate through the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program. A Voice of San Diego analysis found that the 4 percent credits have helped finance more than 20,000 units in San Diego County over the last two decades.

The program allows low-income housing projects to apply for tax credits and look for investors to buy them. Investors, usually banks, then bid for those credits, thus investing in the affordable housing developments and helping to finance them.

State Treasurer John Chiang, Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher and many advocates fear the proposal ending the 4 percent tax credit would be a devastating blow to recently passed state measures meant to address California’s housing crisis.

Measures including a $4 billion state housing bond, a law meant to help house thousandsof Californians with serious mental illnesses and San Diego Sen. Toni Atkins’ hard-fought legislation to bankroll housing with a new real estate document fee all count on the tax credit’s existence.

House Republicans’ tax proposal would dash those plans.

The California Housing Finance Agency projects the number of units produced by the state bond alone could be more than halved if the tax bill passes – from a projected 50,000 new affordable units to as few as 15,000.

And Chiang estimated Thursday that California could produce 300,000 fewer affordable housing units over the next decade than initially projected if the bill passes.

Gonzalez Fletcher acknowledged state lawmakers have far more work to do to address the state’s housing crisis but said the tax proposal could cripple efforts already in play.

“It’s devastating to think that all of that political heavy lifting could be for nothing and that we’d be back to square one on how do we inject necessary resources into this issue,” Gonzalez Fletcher said.

Countless homeless-serving nonprofits have also factored the tax credit into their plans for projects meant to house the homeless.

Father Joe’s Villages, San Diego’s largest homeless serving nonprofit, has said its $531 million plan to produce 2,000 new units counts on the tax credit.

“This isn’t just some complicated tax idea that they don’t understand works,” Chiang said after a press conference in San Diego Thursday. “No, this is real. This has local community implications, real-life implications.”

November 06, 2017

San Diego Has Money in the Bank But Refuses to Build Affordable Housing

With money in the bank San Diego refuses to build housing for the homeless or housing the homeless could afford. The most affordable housing used to be the single room occupancy units in downtown, but those have been torn down to make room for luxury high rise condos. Therefore, poor people have been displaced, and many of them have transitioned into homelessness. With rents sky high, typically $1500. for a two bedroom, many cannot put together first and last month's rent plus a security deposit. Landlords can be choosy and decline those with poor credit.

Recently, a Hepatitus A epidemic has broken out among the homeless due to the deplorable sanitary conditions in which they live. No public rest rooms has led to urination and defecation on the streets, the same streets that tourists and residents walk down. This has gotten the attention of the Mayor and the City Council members who don't want San Diego to get a bad rep. Consequently, hand washing stations have been provided as well as keeping some rest rooms in Balboa Park open 24 hours a day. Other solutions have been hurried into readiness such as three large circus type tents and smaller tents on what amounts to a parking lot. I'm sure the homeless will not want to be crowded together in one large circus tent where they probably won't be able to bring pets. The small tent solution, with sanitation facilities and security seems much more copacetic and practical. There at least they will have their own individual domiciles such as they are.

“The county of San Diego is holding over $100 million in unspent Mental Health Services Act funds,” state Sen. Ben Hueso said.

Real estate is one of the central areas of the FIRE economy. That's what the last two letters of FIRE stand for. It's one of the central pillars of capitalism. You don't want the government to build your house for you, do you? That's the sector for private enterprise. Then why are rents so damn high? They're so damn high that people are evicted on a daily basis for non-payment of rent. The homeless population grows. And why is the price of the median house over $500,000? Average people can't afford to buy and they can't afford to rent. So government gingerly steps in to "solve" the housing crisis in California. In other parts of the country rents and housing are more affordable.

So now the state government, being careful not to say that the housing crisis is the fault of the capitalist system running amok, takes baby steps so that it can claim that it is doing something about affordable housing. Their real view, that they won't mention, is that the solution is for people who can't afford housing in California to move to some other state where they can. Half measures and half steps is what government's both state and local are proposing so it looks like they are doing something while not really doing much of anything.

California state bills SB-2 and SB-3 are just token measures to ameliorate the affordable housing crisis. In effect state and local lawmakers don't consider it a crisis. These bills make it seem like lawmakers are doing something about affordable housing while being careful not to impact the "free market." In fact you can't have government subsidized housing except on a token basis without impacting the free market.

October 26, 2017

A homeless man sleeps along 14th Street in the East Village area of downtown San Diego on Sept. 26. (Sandy Huffaker/For The Washington Post)

SAN DIEGO — California’s exorbitant housing costs are driving a public-health crisis here, as a ­developing-world disease is racing through homeless encampments in cities along the coastThe hepatitis A outbreak in Los Angeles, Santa Cruz and San Diego, long considered a model of savvy urban redevelopment, is the extreme result of a booming state economy, now driving up home prices after years of government decisions that made low-cost housing more difficult to build.

Unlike in some other large U.S. cities, the homeless population in San Diego has been rising sharply, outstripping the local government’s ability to manage its scope. State lawmakers passed more than a dozen measures in the recent legislative session to address the state’s lack of affordable housing, none of which will help resolve the crisis in the short term.

Nowhere is the need more urgent than in this prospering city, where the number of people living on the streets rose 14 percent in the past year, tracing a hepatitis A outbreak that thrives in unsanitary conditions. Health officials believe an epidemic that has infected more than 500 people statewide since March began in San Diego County, where 19 people have died as a result of the disease, nearly all of them homeless.

Extremely rare in the United States, and rarely fatal when it does occur, hepatitis A attacks the liver and causes symptoms such as fever, nausea and jaundice. It is spread when a person ingests food or water tainted by the feces of someone who is infected — that is, it is a virus that stalks the unclean places where the poor are often consigned to live. California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) declared a state of emergency as the result of the outbreak this month.

“An epidemic like this in California — are you serious?” said Timothy Berry, 48, who lives amid the mattresses and tarps lined up along 16th and Island streets outside God’s Extended Hand mission.

Berry lives below the brushed-steel apartment buildings that in recent years have remade this city’s downtown, on streets that crews now power scrub with bleach. Portable toilets and hand-washing stations mark downtown corners in the shadows of buildings where sea kayaks are visible through the glass balconies of $2,000-a-month studios.

The first of three large, city-sanctioned tents opened earlier this month to bring some of the more than 9,000 homeless people into sanitary conditions, at least temporarily. A vaccination program that already has protected more than 65,000 residents continues with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has called this outbreak the deadliest since it began tracking the disease in the United States two decades ago.

Paulina Bobenrieth, a nurse with the public health department, gives a hepatitis A vaccine to a homeless man in San Diego on Oct. 4. A hepatitis A outbreak has killed numerous homeless people and sent hundreds to hospitals. (Sandy Huffaker/For The Washington Post)

But the long-term solution is simple and elusive: constructing more housing that those on the streets, and the estimated 500,000 San Diego County residents living a missed paycheck away from homelessness, can afford.

September 22, 2017

No Rest Rooms in Downtown San Diego Plus Thousands of Homeless Equals Hepatitis A Outbreak

by John Lawrence

What did they expect to happen? To be blunt people were living on the streets, the same streets tourists and residents were plodding down, and they were shitting and pissing all over the streets and sidewalks. I say again: what did they expect to happen? People were going to Padres games, spending hundreds of dollar on tickets, food, beverages and merchandise and they're walking over streets contaminated with human and animal waste products. Don't forget a lot of homeless people have pets. They had nowhere to go either.

San Diego didn't used to provide public rest rooms for anybody, much less the homeless. It's just that they couldn't afford to. They spend millions of dollars on everything else, but they couldn't afford public bathrooms. If you couldn't afford to patronize some profit making establishment where you could use the bathroom, you were just out of luck. You had to go in the bushes. That's just what thousands of homeless have done... and the sidewalks.

European cities provide public rest rooms on practically every corner, even the poorest cities. San Diego, by contrast, set up a Portland Loo and then decided that there was too much crime going on there and took it away. Most European public bath rooms have attendants who oversee the operation and make sure it stays clean and safe. Of course San Diego never thought of that. These European bathroom attendants were probably not paid very much, but at least they had a job. Suppose San Diego could afford that?

Now the LA Times reported that Los Angeles County health officials declared a hepatitis A outbreak, days after a public health emergency was announced in San Diego County, where at least 16 people have died of the highly contagious virus. It has been known for some time that the homeless were running up huge bills for taxpayers to pay at San Diego emergency rooms, but that and the extra costs for police were not enough to persuade local "leaders" to provide housing and sanitary living conditions for those who couldn't provide it for themselves. So public expense, public safety and now public health evidently are not enough motivation for the public to do something about the homeless situation. As has been pointed out, the City has the money in various funds, but it won't spend it on housing for the homeless.

Councilman David Alvarez, one of the memo’s co-authors, said the city is sitting on “literally hundreds of millions of dollars” it could spend on housing.

“Unfortunately, the mayor has refused to take action on this issue,” Alvarez said. “We are seeing more and more money coming back to the city in the general fund. ... This was intended to be used for more housing and it hasn’t been.

“You’d have to ask the Mayor’s Office why they don’t want to use it for that purpose.”

Katheryn Rhodes and I did a series of articles on money the City of San Diego has squirreled away in the LMIHAF fund and other funds that it is supposed to use for affordable housing but won't do it. Something like $30 million altogether. It seems the Mayor doesn't want his reputation tarnished by catering to the homeless. It would be unseemly. So tourists and downtown residents living in million dollar condos will just have to take the Hepatitis A risk on themselves.

September 16, 2017

Approval of package aimed at California’s affordability crisis is historic, but unlikely to make a huge dent.

By Liam Dillon

State Sen. Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) receives congratulations from Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) after her housing measure was approved by the state Assembly on Thursday. (Rich Pedroncelli / AP)

SACRAMENTO — California lawmakers sped to the close of the legislative session on Friday, addressing one of their signature issues with a sweeping package of bills aiming to address the state’s crippling housing costs.

The bills are an effort to raise billions in funding to help finance the construction of thousands of new homes for low-income residents, while also easing local regulations on home building — a necessary move, lawmakers said, to help middle-class Californians who are now overwhelmed by costs.

“I’ve read study after study after study outlining this crisis,” said Assemblyman Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica), one of the leading legislators on housing issues. “We’re here to do something about it.”

Three measures, Senate Bills 2, 3 and 35, comprise the key parts of the housing deal. Under SB 2, those refinancing their homes or filing other real estate documents — aside from home and commercial property sales — will pay a starting fee of $75 with a maximum of $225 paid per transaction. The measure is expected to raise about $250 million a year to finance the construction of affordable housing.

SB 3 places a bond measure on the November 2018 statewide ballot with $3 billion set aside to also finance low-income development, and an additional $1 billion for veterans home loans.SB 35 would require cities and counties to limit environmental, planning and other reviews on land already zoned for a developer’s proposed amount of housing.Gov. Jerry Brown is expected to sign the three bills.

“This comprehensive approach does what’s long been needed in California — build new homes and improve access to housing,” Brown said in a joint statement over the summer with Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon and Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León.

August 23, 2017

Real estate is one of the central areas of the FIRE economy. That's what the last two letters of FIRE stand for. It's one of the central pillars of capitalism. You don't want the government to build your house for you, do you? That's the sector for private enterprise. Then why are rents so damn high? They're so damn high that people are evicted on a daily basis for non-payment of rent. The homeless population grows. And why is the price of the median house over $500,000? Average people can't afford to buy and they can't afford to rent. So government gingerly steps in to "solve" the housing crisis in California. In other parts of the country rents and housing are more affordable.

So now the state government gingerly steps in, being careful not to say that the housing crisis is the fault of the capitalist system running amok, with baby steps so that it can claim that it is doing something about affordable housing. Their real view, that they won't mention, is that the solution is for people who can't afford housing in California to move to some other state where they can. Half measures and half steps is what government's both state and local are proposing so it looks like they are doing something while not really doing much of anything.

So now the state government gingerly steps in to solve the housing crisis

California state bills SB-2 and SB-3 are just token measures to ameliorate the affordable housing crisis. In effect state and local lawmakers don't consider it a crisis. These bills make it seem like lawmakers are doing something about affordable housing while being careful not to impact the "free market." In fact you can't have government subsidized housing except on a token basis without impacting the free market.

So what does San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer propose? Reducing developers' fees, streamlining red tape and letting people build "granny flats." A free market approach, if I ever saw one, guaranteed to help mainly developers and homeowners with enough money to actually construct a granny flat on their own property. Lisa Halverstadt has run down the various developer incentives in her article Areas of Consensus Emerge Among the Crush of Housing Plans.

While the free market is failing to provide affordable housing in California and state and local governments are providing token measures, the only real albeit unspoken solution is for those who can't afford California real estate to leave the state and go to other states where housing is affordable. So only the rich will be able to afford a really nice climate with plenty of sunshine, no tornadoes and no flash floods. Watch out for those sea level rises though.

August 20, 2017

This bill before the California Legislature is too vague and diluted to do any good.

by John Lawrence

Here's how it starts:

"Under existing law, there are programs providing assistance for, among other things, emergency housing, multifamily housing, farmworker housing, home ownership for very low and low-income households, and downpayment assistance for first-time home buyers."

Well, existing law is so diffuse and vague I wonder how many people are actually being helped. Moreover, the proposed bill is still sufficiently diffuse and vague that I wonder how much of an improvement it represents.

Here's the next sentence:

"Existing law also authorizes the issuance of bonds in specified amounts pursuant to the State General Obligation Bond Law. Existing law requires that proceeds from the sale of these bonds be used to finance various existing housing programs, capital outlay related to infill development, brownfield cleanup that promotes infill development, and housing-related parks."

So they can issue bonds for a whole bunch of vague programs which may or may not help actual people. So what?

OK. Now they get to what this bill is about. Basically it authorizes raising more money for affordable housing. Again it's vague. Exactly how is this money going to be spent and what do you mean by affordable housing? And by the way the only thing this has to do with jobs is that the construction workers doing the actual building will have jobs. Big Deal.

"This bill would enact the Building Homes and Jobs Act. The bill would make legislative findings and declarations relating to the need for establishing permanent, ongoing sources of funding dedicated to affordable housing development. The bill would impose a fee, except as provided, of $75 to be paid at the time of the recording of every real estate instrument, paper, or notice required or permitted by law to be recorded, per each single transaction per single parcel of real property, not to exceed $225."

Then the bill gets a little more specific about how the money is to be spent but not much.

"The bill would, upon appropriation by the Legislature, require that 20% of the moneys in the fund be expended for affordable owner-occupied workforce housing and 10% of the moneys for housing purposes related to agricultural workers and their families, and would authorize the remainder of the moneys in the fund to be expended to support affordable housing, home ownership opportunities, and other housing-related programs, as specified."

So what exactly is owner-occupied workforce housing? Is that as opposed to housing for people not in the workforce? Is it for owners that need help paying their mortgages? Is it for building new housing for new owners? Again the wording is so vague that this could be twisted six ways to Sunday. And why are agricultural workers singled out for help? As opposed to workers in other industries? What's the hook here? If I grow vegetables, am I an agricultural worker? These legislators need to get their heads straight about what affordable housing actually is, how this impinges on market rate housing and what are the criteria for people they actually want help. Otherwise, it will just be another giveaway to developers who are happy to take government money.

The rest of the bill is just a bunch of bureaucratic gobbledygook not worth mentioning here. I really think the government, in this case the California state government, needs to take full responsibility for housing those who cannot afford to house themselves, and this includes homeless people first. As long as developers and other private corporations take their cut, the money raised will not go as far as it would with full fledged public housing, a concept that state legislators need to wrap their heads around.

SACRAMENTO — A full-fledged housing crisis has gripped California, marked by a severe lack of affordable homes and apartments for middle-class families. The median cost of a home here is now a staggering $500,000, twice the national cost. Homelessness is surging across the state.

In Los Angeles, booming with construction and signs of prosperity, some people have given up on finding a place and have moved into vans with makeshift kitchens, hidden away in quiet neighborhoods. In Silicon Valley — an international symbol of wealth and technology — lines of parked recreational vehicles are a daily testimony to the challenges of finding an affordable place to call home.

Heather Lile, a nurse who makes $180,000 a year, commutes two hours from her home in Manteca to the San Francisco hospital where she works, 80 miles away. “I make really good money and it’s frustrating to me that I can’t afford to live close to my job,” said Ms. Lile.

The extreme rise in housing costs has emerged as a threat to the state’s future economy and its quality of life. It has pushed the debate over housing to the center of state and local politics, fueling a resurgent rent control movement and the growth of neighborhood “Yes in My Back Yard” organizations, battling long-established neighborhood groups and local elected officials as they demand an end to strict zoning and planning regulations.

Now here in Sacramento, lawmakers are considering extraordinary legislation to, in effect, crack down on communities that have, in their view, systematically delayed or derailed housing construction proposals, often at the behest of local neighborhood groups.

Californians for Affordable Housing outlined several counter-points to Governor Brown’s plan that show how “by right,” if passed, would hurt most Californians:

This is not about affordable housing. Brown’s proposal does not address California’s real barriers to producing affordable housing. The proposal fails to address the need for dedicated affordable housing funding, the priorities of disadvantaged communities, or exclusionary zoning – the most fundamental affordable housing and displacement issues.

Increases displacement. A policy that enables “by-right” simply deregulates market rate housing development which has proven in all of California’s major urban areas to cause displacement of lower income communities. We believe in a California that is home to people of all economic, social, and ethnic backgrounds.

Erodes existing protections. “This plan has the potential to undermine rent control protections by expediting demolition of existing housing without public input. With 5 California cities going the ballot this November to establish rent control protections, we won’t stand by and let Governor Brown undo our work.

Strips away citizen input. Democracy is not a barrier for development. Exclusionary local zoning regulations - not community participation - keeps affordable apartment homes from being built. Participation has proven to result in greater affordable housing, lesser environmental impacts, retention of small businesses and a stable, diverse economic base.

The organizations who are a part of CAH formed by signing on to an opposition letter here. To add your voice to defend the right of communities to require real estate developers to protect tenants, jobs, small businesses, and the environment, complete the form to the right and click “START WRITING”. A sample letter will pop up that you can edit and send via email.

June 16, 2016

On Wednesday, June 15, 2016, there was a well attended meeting of the Rules Committee of the San Diego City Council. Many diverse topics were covered, some at exhaustive lengths. The meeting lasted over three hours with a dozen or more speakers pleading their causes. Most were asking the Rules Committee to take their issues to the full City Council and have them vote to put them on the November ballot.

There was a discussion of the nature of the voting system. The way it is right now someone running for office who gets 50% of the vote plus one in the June primary is considered elected. Any less than that and there is a run-off on the November ballot between the top two vote getters. Jeff Marston of the Independent Voter Project maintained that, since more voters vote in the November election than in the primary, all final votes should be in that election in which more voters would have a say. A new voter Marissa Gomez, 19, favored that approach.

Will San Diego Adopt Instant Run-off Voting?

Councilman Kersey said that this would only lengthen the voting process and make the November ballot that much more unfathomable with options and propositions so numerous as to boggle the average voter's mind. Better to get some things out of the way on the June ballot. He suggested that perhaps Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) was a better way to go. IRV is an electoral system whereby voters rank candidates in order of preference. In the event that one candidate fails to achieve a sufficient majority, the candidate with the fewest number of first-preference rankings is eliminated and these votes redistributed, the process being repeated until one candidate achieves the required majority. Talk about getting down to the nuts and bolts of voting! A motion was made and carried 3 to 2 to bring the proposal, that the 50% + 1 rule be eliminated, to the full City Council and have them vote on it.

Next came the Public Health and Social Welfare Ballot Proposal. Stephanie Johnson made a slide presentation about the many homeless people she had met and what their problems were. Those problems included Tammy's which was that she couldn't afford lodging despite getting around $1000. in Social Security each month. With the average rent for a studio apartment more than $1000., Social Security would have to pay about twice that before a person could afford a roof over their head and food too.

Stuck in a System With No Exit

Melissa and Jason had their children taken away from them, and were "stuck in a system and cannot get out". Minor fines added up, jobs were not forthcoming because of outstanding fines and prior criminal records. Homeless people are fined for sitting. That comes under the heading of loitering, and so homelessness becomes criminalized. The Colonel had his social security check withheld because he can't pay his fines for being homeless.

Ms Johnson talked about how some of the homeless she encountered were "incredibly high" off of Spice which is sold legally in Hillcrest. Another homeless woman had been raped since childhood and was presently pregnant with twins. It was a veritable litany of hard luck stories that she pleaded with the City to do something about.

John Stump added, "We're measured on how we treat the least of these, and we're not doing enough." He noted that we had an Arts and Culture Commission that made sure arts and culture prospered in the City but there was no Human Services Commission that would provide oversight and look out for the interests of the less fortunate. The City was hoarding money, as Katheryn Rhodes has also repeatedly pointed out, in the LMIHAF fund and other places, and a City Commission could possibly force this money out the door and point it in the right direction - to help those who needed help.

Is Compassion a Civic Virtue?

Rodney Hodges, a homeless man, spoke very eloquently about his situation and about the one civic virtue we lack - compassion, caring for someone other than ourselves. He said the City has vacant facilities all over town, and the point that the City has money that it is hoarding has been made repeatedly with no counter-arguments from any of the members of the Rules Committee.

I think a lot of the detail that Katheryn Rhodes has dug up is really too deep for most of them. I think they are incapable of comprehending it, but maybe upon repeated exposure some of it will sink in. Her presentation today included the fact that online hoteliers such as Expedia and Trivago pay no TOT taxes which represents money the City could use if it wanted to solve the homelessness problem which evidently it does not. It just wants to tinker around the edges to show that it is doing something while not doing very much.

A spokeswoman for the Democratic Women's Club (DWC) wants the City to reinstate charter sections 60 and 61. Section 60 had to do with the establishment of a Public Health Commission and a Director of Public Health. This section of the City Charter was repealed in 1963. Section 61 had to do with the establishment of a Department of Social Welfare and a Director of Social Welfare. This section was also repealed in 1963.

Do the Poor People of San Diego Need a New Football Stadium?

The lady from the DWC said that poor people have needs that aren't being served by building a new stadium. While there's always money available for rich people's needs, poor people are left in the unenviable position of sucking hind teat (my words, not hers). The City cannot make the excuse that the County will deal with the homeless situation and the needs of poor people because the County gets its funds from HUD, and those funds do not serve the needs of homeless women and children. Jeeni Criscenzo has made the point many times that homeless women and children numbering some 22,000 (which can be ascertained from official school records) are routinely left out of the Point In Time count.

Councilwoman Marti Emerald said that she's engaged in this issue and that the City was spending millions of dollars to help the homeless. I guess that's not enough since the homeless population gets larger every day. She mentioned the Continuum of Care meetings. The Regional Continuum of Care Council (RCCC) is a community-based association focused on ending homelessness in San Diego and charged with overseeing millions of dollars in federal funding under the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Continuum of Care (CoC) program. I guess this HUD funding is what the Democratic Women's Club spokeswoman referred to as being unavailable for women and children.

Ms Emerald mentioned Girls Think Tank which is doing admirable work with the homeless. Girls Think Tank is now called Think Dignity so I guess the well-intentioned Ms Emerald is a little bit behind the times. She said, "I believe that together we can find new solutions." She said that they are pushing the County to "do better." She wants to establish more senior centers.

Councilman Chris Cate chimed in that he and other City Council persons were volunteering their time working with non-profits. Well that is not exactly what San Diego citizens were asking them to do. Whether or not they are personally involved in activities outside the purview of the City Council is not the issue. The issue is, in their role as City Council persons, how can they best contribute to getting the job done? Their position does give them considerable leverage. Councilman Cate mentioned "how do we get the most bang for our buck" Simple: release the hoarded money and earmark it for affordable housing! He said, "we're working hard to do more with the dollars we do have." I don't think so. They always plead poverty when it comes to helping the impoverished. But they don't have a problem with slinging around billions of dollars for a new convadium, for instance. They don't bat an eyelash over borrowing $1.15 billion for that. Poverty indeed!!

Let the People Pay for Trash!

The League of Women Voters (LWV) wants the City to get rid of the Peoples' Ordinance which lets single family homeowners in the City get free trash disposal. Those that don't live in single family homes, which is the majority of City residents, don't get it. The LWV wants this ordinance recalled. It should be. It would add another $47 million to the General Fund. The City wouldn't have to borrow as much for the new Convadium or it could almost pay off the $60 million on Qualcomm Stadium that it still owes. Still the City does nothing. They don't want to piss off a lot of their constituents who are attached to their freebies. There was no second to Marti Emerald's motion to bring this proposal to the full City Council for a vote to place it on the November ballot.

Next it was Women Occupy San Diego's (WOSD) turn to take the floor. Notice a trend here? Most if not all of these groups are women. I guess men are out pursuing their corporate greedy jobs.The WOSD want a reform of the Citizen's Review Board to include a review of all police shootings and in custody deaths. They want police accountability. Right now the police review themselves. I wonder what could go wrong there? They want 3 things: independent investigators, independent legal council and subpoena power. She said, "The police shouldn't be in charge of investigating their own misconduct."

What struck me is that there are people of all ranks and abilities involved in civil discourse from the WOSD attorney who spoke to those demonstrating in the streets. The level of civic involvement in particular for social justice issues is impressive. Of course the rich corporate lobbyists do their work behind the scenes. The Chamber of Commerce types weren't present at the Rules Committee meeting.

A Smorgasbord of Issues Boggles the Mind

The ever present citizen advocate, John Stump, brought up a smorgasbord of other issues from the subsidy the City gives to the zoo that it doesn't need (it is very profitable, thank you) to the fact that the "Council has the authority to own and operate a public utility" whether this be the internet, energy or something else. They said we need "community choice aggregation" in order to get to the City's "Climate Action Plan" goal. Oh, and he mentioned that the school board should be enlarged to better serve the citizens since the population has grown considerably while at the same time no new seats have been made available on the school board. There is currently no high school in City Heights which has a tenth of the City's total population.

Finally Katheryn Rhodes spoke about the need to redefine what a hotel operator was in order to tax online hotel operators. Since the number one complaint of tourists is the downtown homeless population (it sort of takes the fun out of visiting San Diego when you have to step over turds in the street), it makes sense to have part of the TOT tax go to clean up the streets by housing the homeless.

As Katheryn has pointed out repeatedly, there is money available if only the City would stop hoarding it. We need more CAFRs (Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports). I don't think the acronym challenged City Council can get their heads around Katheryn's work. She also advocated for Tiny Homes for the homeless and pointed out the mismatch between City Ordinances and State Laws. What needs to take place is a lawsuit ala Cory Briggs against the City to spring loose those hoarded funds in the LMIHAF and other equally abstruse funds and get the ball rolling. San Diego residents want it. Tourists want it. The Chamber of Commerce wants it. The only people who don't want it are the compassionless which was pointed out earlier, those people who think every resident should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, even those entrapped in a cycle of poverty.

A Heartening Example of Civic Democracy. Let's Hope It Does Some Good

Today was a heartening exercise in civic democracy. Let's hope it is to some avail. The Democratic Women's Club, the League of Women Voters, Women Occupy San Diego, Stephanie Johnson, Katheryn Rhodes and many other women - all were there. Where were the men's groups or the LGBTQ groups for that matter? It's clear that women are among the most compassionate members of society. The only men there were John Stump, Rodney Hodges and a few others. Men are clearly not as advanced in the compassion index as are women.

May 12, 2016

This article was originally published in the 1969 print edition of the San Diego Free Press. It follows on to our 4 part series on affordable housing in San Diego. So what else is new? Nothing except the price of real estate.

The housing situation in San Diego, especially for people with low incomes, bears all the earmarks of a terminal illness. The condition is grave and seems destined to get worse. The City will tell you that 1968 was a year in which San Diego experienced a record boom in housing construction, but their figures are completely misleading. It is true that there were 12,525 units of housing begun in 1968, as compared with 6,100 units in 1967, and that while city building doubled, rural building was up 47% in 1968 over the previous year. Yet most of this activity was in the realm of plush apartments and condominiums which cater to middle and high income groups, thus leaving people with low incomes at the mercy of soaring prices and a vacancy rate for the entire city of less than one percent.

This critical situation in San Diego is by no means unusual nationally. 90% of the family residential units in the US cost the purchaser over $20,000. [As an aside, coastal real estate in San Diego County could be purchased for below $20,000 in 1969. Today it would be hard to find anything for less than $1,000,000.] Yet half the people earn less than $7,800 per year. To make the payments on a $20,000 home, a person must earn at least $9,000 per year. A little simple arithmetic shows that at least half the people in this country can afford only 10% of the housing now being constructed. When it comes to low cost housing today, the law of supply and demand seems to have gone awry.

What makes housing so expensive? The housing industry is one of the most inflated sectors of the US economy. The construction industry represents 10% of the GNP--80 billion dollars a year which is divided up among a lot of relatively small companies. There hasn't been the centralization that has taken place in the automobile industry, for example. Mass production of industrialized homes could cut costs considerably, but this does not occur mainly because the rate of profit in low cost housing does not compare with that in higher cost housing.

Construction costs have increased 85% since 1951. In the past year the cost of some materials, particularly lumber, has increased as much as 100%. But labor has been the chief reason why costs have increased so spectacularly. Many plumbers and carpenters now earn $20,000 per year, often for a 32 hour week. Craftsmen in general now earn at about twice the hourly rate of college graduates. Another reason for the high cost of housing is land. The cost of urban residential land across the nation has risen nearly 400% since 1934. Land costs are rising so high that it is fast becoming a reality that the land costs more than the structure built upon It. Since land is becoming so expensive, houses are being crowded closer and closer together and multi-family dwellings are becoming more common.

The attitude of the business community toward low coat housing is negative. The general trend is to replace dilapidated housing by high cost housing, thus upgrading the property values and leaving those who cannot afford it literally out on the street. Poorer people are eventually forced out of suburbs and into the already crowded city ghettos and barrios. This type of policy is being implemented here in Ocean Beach where business interests are trying to oust hippies and other low income people by raising rents and/or replacing low cost with high cost housing.

What is being done to correct this situation in San Diego? There is a group of businessmen called "San Diego Housing", a non-profit development corporation headed by Dan Grady, whose purpose is to give assistance and expertise to people who want to avail themselves of Federal housing programs. They have projects in Linda Vista and Southeast San Diego. Some of the Federal housing programs are the following: Model Cities, Leased Housing program, Rent Subsidy program, Community Housing Improvement and Revitalization program and Home Ownership Mortgage Insurance Assistance program. Many of these programs were put into effect by the 1965 Housing Act. The Model Cities program is an attempt to plan a 5 year action program to resolve problems in 10 different areas including housing, welfare, crime and transportation.

$268,000 has been allocated to San Diego for the first year. This money will go to analyze problems and come up with a plan. Additional money will he required to actually implement a program. The MC [Model Cities] project is concentrating on two areas of San Diego: Southeast and San Ysdro. This program is good in that it is intended to be a comprehensive approach, but it is doubtful whether the Federal funds needed will be forthcoming.

The Leased Housing program involves cities leasing housing units from private owners. The city then subleases these to needy people who pay rent amounting to 25% of their income.

The San Diego Housing Authority administers the program and federal subsidies finance it. This year San Diego had a quota of 1000 units. This program has been unsuccessfull because private owners are reluctant to lease their homes to needy people when they can rent them more profitably on the open market. The quota was never filled.

The Rent Subsidy program involves the subsidization of rent paid by poor people who qualify. Under the program people pay out only 25% of their income.

The purpose of the Community Housing, Improvement and Revitalization program is to conserve property values and improve the living environment. Under this program San Diego's current budget is 1.7 million dollars. The [purpose of the] Home Ownership Mortgage Insurance Assistance program is to reduce the interest on the home purchases mortgage rate to 1%. [This could be accomplished more efficiently with a public bank.] All of these programs are fragmented, piecemeal attempts to solve a problem which needs a massive unified, concerted approach. They are not adequate to the dimensions of the problem.

They all in effect subsidize the rich landlords, property owners, and capital investors by paying them inflated market rates for the use of their property and then letting the poorer people use it at prices they can afford. It seems everybody is happy, both rich and poor, but it means that the rich get richer and the poor stay where they are [thus driving income inequality]. If the goal of those programs is to solve the problems of inadequate and insufficient housing, they fail miserably. The difficulty is that the federal government makes inefficient use of the tax dollars at its disposal. Instead of using the money directly to provide low cost housing for those who need it, the government funnels the money to the wealthy property owners in return for the limited use of their land.

If the federal government's programs are not adequate to the need, can private industry fill the void in low cost housing? There are no handsome profits to be made in this field. Industry will only venture into it when subsidized by the federal government and then only as a measure of profiteering off government funds--again off our tax dollars.

A good example of this is the South Bay Terrace project owned by a Mr. Kahn. Subsidized by Federal funds, Kahn is building what many people regard as another ghetto--crowding as many units into one parcel of land as possible. Many urban experts think that for low cost housing to be effective, it must not he all concentrated in one location, but should be dispersed throughout the city. This leads to a more homogeneous distribution of income groups and a healthier social situation.

The reason that it is unprofitable to build low cost housing on the open market is that the cost of any housing is dominated by land, labor and profits. These are used to practically the same extent regardless of the "quality" of the structure being built. A very small fraction of the total cost goes into aspects that separate high quality housing from low quality housing. In other words it costs almost as much to build "low" cost housing as "high" cost housing, but "high" cost housing is more profitable.

Without even considering "communitizing" the land, many housing experts have concluded that the only solution to this problem is the introduction of the mass-produced prefabricated housing. This industry could he organized by the government as a non-profit enterprise. In one form this has happened with the mobile home business, and nearly one out of every four Californians live in a mobile home. But this industry in still run by profit making business men and it isn't that much cheaper. [Factory produced tiny homes could get the homeless off the streets at a minimal cost.]

As it stands now, the poor will remain dependent on a handout and remain in sub-human dwellings, while the tax payer gets pissed off at government waste. Too often the taxpayer will blame the poor for what is a government fuckup that aids the rich. Realistic low cost housing, which would curb inflation and save tax dollars, will remain a long way off unless the profit motive and the profit makers are expurgated from the solution.

May 06, 2016

According to a recent Zillow report: "Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, and San Diego are unaffordable for both renters and buyers. ... Looking forward, the picture doesn’t look bright for renters. Rents will likely keep rising at roughly their current pace for at least the next few years, which will lead to a continued affordability crunch unless wage growth significantly improves."

Enter the San Diego Housing Commission (SDHC) whose job is to redress the balance of unaffordable rents to make it possible for San Diego to be inhabited by other then rich folks.

The San Diego Housing Commission (SDHC)does a variety of projects to assist low and moderate income folks. From their website it would seem that they are doing a lot, but is it merely tokenism or are they using all available resources to build affordable housing as quickly as possible? After all, there is a declared emergency in terms of the increasing numbers of the homeless population that aren't being taken care of. In addition rents are skyrocketing to the point that teachers, police, firefighters and other government workers cannot afford to live in the City or County of San Diego. To the extent possible they, especially the police, are taking jobs elsewhere.

According to the SDHC Annual Report they have three major program areas:

In this report Mayor Faulconer declares that "over the next three years the SDHC will award up to $30 million to create permanent supportive housing rental units for homeless individuals and families." This is all well and good except for the fact that $30 million doesn't go very far in building rental units, and "awarded" means that a big cut of this money will be taken by developers and various business interests instead of the SDHC building and owning the units themselves. There is much more than $30 million available for affordable housing as outlined in Part 1 of this series.

According to the San Diego Affordable Housing Fund Fiscal Year 2015 Annual Report, the SDHC has access to two funds - the Housing Trust Fund (HTF) and the Inclusionary Housing Fund (IHF). HTF revenues for FY15 totaled $2,623,540, and IHF revenues for FY 2015 totaled $16,354,345. It may seem like a lot of money, but it's a pittance compared to what's needed and the monies that are available and being hoarded by the City in various unaudited funds. And when the Mayor says "over the next three years" up to $30 million will be made available, that's 10 million a year, folks. Politicians are always uping the amounts and then spreading them over the next 3 to 10 to 30 years to make the amounts sound more impressive. Case in point - the minimum wage increase to $15 an hour is spread over 6 years!

According to City Council Policy 600-13 last amended 24 years ago, the former 20% Affordable Housing set-aside, now the Low Moderate Income Housing Asset Fund (LMIHAF), was to be put into the Housing Trust Fund (HTF) under the control of the SDHC. This happened for FY-1993 and FY-1995, then stopped, and the 20% set-aside was given to Centre City Development Commission (CCDC) instead. And what did the CCDC do with it? Build luxury high rise condos in downtown San Diego instead of affordable housing, tearing down Single Room Occupancy (SRO) units in the process and destroying the homes of many low income individuals who subsequently became homeless. This led to the accusations of corruption and the termination of the CCDC.

"It is further the intent of Council to provide for the contribution of the San Diego Redevelopment Agency housing set-aside funds in addressing the affordable housing issue in San Diego and to require the Redevelopment Agency to coordinate with the Housing Commission to ensure the effective and timely use of these funds."

The City of San Diego is violating their own Council Policy by letting Civic San Diego be in charge of the LMIHAF instead of the SDHC.

The County of San Diego's Mental Health Service Act (MHSA) program also states that the City will be using LMIHAF through the SDHC to house the Severaly Mentally Ill (SMI) Urban Homeless within city limits. However, nothing happens. The SDHC has stated they do not want to step on the toes of Civic San Diego.

Programs involving the County of San Diego are administered by the Board of Supervisors, an all Republican, all white, all San Diego State graduates group with a $5 billion budget. These guys and gals, all true Republicans, have shorted health and human services for years with only 7% of their discretionary budget going thereto. No wonder County administered programs like food stamps, Medi-Cal, In Home Supportive Services (IHSS), CalWORKS and other programs are understaffed and poorly managed with huge wait times for services.

I noticed a few things from the San Diego Affordable Housing Fund Fiscal Year 2015 Annual Report that lead me to believe that the SDHC could be doing much more than they are doing right now to build affordable housing. The Affordable Housing Fund (AHF) which comprises the HTF and the IHF has five goals:

1) Meet a portion of the need for housing that is affordable to households with very low to moderate incomes;

2) Leverage every $1 of City funds with $2 of non-City subsidy capital funds;

3) Support the Balanced Communities Policy by fostering a mix of household incomes in projects assisted by the AHF and dispersing affordable housing developments throughout the City;

4) Preserve and maintain renter and ownership affordable housing; and

5) Encourage private sector activities that advance these goals.

How about meeting more than a portion of the need for affordable housing. THINK BIG.

And then about the leveraging. Instead of non-City capital funds, why not go to the capital markets the way it is proposed for the new Convadium and leverage 5 to 1 instead of 2 to 1? If the City can borrow $1.15 billion which is proposed by the "People's Initiative" (in reality the Chargers' Initiative) to build a new stadium for the Chargers along with an extension to the convention center, why then the City can damn well get more mileage out of leveraging whatever money it can gets its hands on to build affordable housing and not just a paltry 2 to 1 ratio.

So what's the leverage on the proposed $1.15 billion for the convadium? They are going to leverage a few million in hotel taxes to get over a billion from Wall Street. That's some leverage, friends.

But then the establishment of a public bank would obviate the necessity of going to Wall Street at all, and the interest would accrue to the general fund saving the taxpayers money.

Low Income People Need Rent Assistance Not 30 Year Mortgages

Another thing - why is the SDHC involved in supporting home ownership for low income families? Low income families need affordable rents not home ownership. Money is squandered on purchasing single family houses when many more units of apartment style housing could be built for the same money. Low income families are precisely the ones who are likely to be foreclosed on as they were during the 2008 housing crisis. They don't need to be on the hook for 30 year mortgages. These houses would be obtained at market rates which are ridiculous for low income families in San Diego and represents a waste of money for the SDHC.

The SDHC needs to build and own apartment style affordable units for low income and homeless people, not developer built units that revert to market rates after so many years. That is a good investment for developers but not for the SDHC which will then have to build more housing to support the same number of subsidized units.

The SDHC doesn't need to worry about building market rate houses and apartments. Let the "free market" take care of that. However, it does need to step up to the plate and build apartments for low income and homeless people. That's the business it should be in, and it needs to cut out all the middle men, the developers, the underwriters and in particular the Wall Street financiers. How many cities have been snookered by Wall Street from Milan, Italy to Birmingham, AL? If the SDHC isn't up to the task, another City agency which is more hands on should take over - something like a San Diego Building Commission whose job would be to simply let contracts to build affordable housing. IMHO, they would just say to a contractor, "Here's the plans. Get to work." It's the KISS principal - Keep It Simple Stupid - and eliminate as much bureaucracy as possible in the process.

One of the solutions is for the San Diego Housing Commission to buy old run down motels and apartments and fix them up. Instead of new public/private construction where developers get rich, a more sustainable solution is to buy and rehabilitate. This is what they did at the Lighthouse at 3880 Rosecrans for homeless people who were getting out of jail. No Conditional User Permit (CUP) or public hearing was required because the Lighthouse is located in an area where Emergency Shelter and Transitional Housing is allowed Ministerially by Right on the same map that includes downtown. The Midway Pacific Highway Planning Board was upset with the change in use from Run Down Motel to Housing for Felons without recourse by the community through the CUP process. My advice to the community: suck it up. According to SB-2, Cedillo, a CUP is not required.

Affordable Housing is a Good Deal for Developers

Sorrento Tower at 2875 Cowley Way in the Clairemont area provides 197 low income housing units, and a contract was let in 2011 to rehabilitate the aging project. “Here at Sorrento Tower, what we’re doing is preserving senior housing for decades to come, while at the same time preserving its affordability as well,” San Diego Housing Commission President and CEO Richard C. Gentry said at a re-opening ceremony.

Rent protections in the original federally assisted Sorrento Tower mortgage were due to expire by 2016, allowing the property to convert to market-rate rental housing. The units had been restricted to people earning 50% of the Area Median Income (AMI) - $33,050 for a 2 person household.

Instead, the owners sold the building to a new development team under terms that maintained affordable housing and incurred another developer fee of over $2 million as well. At the time of the rehab, all units were renting for $335 a month. Developers for projects such as these receive substantial fees for their services in rehabing old projects. For this project their fees represented almost 12% of total costs. And then there's all the interest on the $13.6 million in bonds paid to Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms. In the end the developer also ends up owning the project and has the option of cashing out after the affordable time period expires. Not a good solution except for developers, Wall Street financiers, underwriters, lawyers and realtors. Is this is the best use of funds to provide permanent low income housing? I don't think so.

Sorrento Tower is now owned by Sorrento Tower Housing Partners, LP, a limited partnership, not the City of San Diego. What this means is that, after a certain time period (55 years in this case), the project will revert to market rate housing and the city will have to go through this merry-ro-round all over again. If the City owned it, that would not be the case.

There needs to be housing units built to replace all the old Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels that have been torn down. It doesn't need to be El Primo with a kitchen and bathroom in every unit. Communal kitchens and bathrooms like those found in most college dorms should be sufficient thus saving money. Hostels usually have just communal facilities.

The main thing is a lockable room or rooms with sufficient social services for people with handicaps, physical or mental, services for children, provisions for pets, communal laundry facilities and whatever it takes to get people off the streets and into affordable housing. Once this basic purpose has been accomplished, more extensive units can be added or market rate units with rental assistance can be built. This would be the best use of limited funds. Make sense? OK let's get to work.

The housing crisis for poor people is worse now after the financial crisis of 2008 than it was previously according to Jed Kolko, a senior fellow at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California at Berkeley who said:

“U.S. housing markets are more unequal today than they were before the housing bubble. The spread in home values has gotten bigger. The spread in incomes has gotten bigger. America’s cities today are less like each other on these measures than they were before the bubble.”

May 01, 2016

In the City of Palo Alto, if you make less than $250,000 a year, you're eligible for a housing subsidy. The city council has voted to study a housing proposal that would essentially subsidize new housing for what qualifies as middle-class nowadays, families making from $150,000 to $250,000 a year.

Here in San Diego the situation is not much better as teachers, police and government workers cannot afford to live in the city they work in. So if middle class, college educated professionals can't afford to live here, how can anyone else lower on the economic ladder afford to live here either? In particular those on the bottom most rung, the homeless, can't even afford a foot in the door.

This report finds that nearly 50% of San Diegans face housing affordability challenges in rentals and homeownership, and over 70% of San Diegans are priced out of the homeownership market....

The City of San Diego is one of the most unaffordable housing markets in the nation. Zillow recently surveyed nearly 300 cities and found San Diego to be one of the most unaffordable six markets in the United States. Both renting and owning in San Diego are increasingly out of reach for average families. The average home price in San Diego is $506,000 according to Zillow – affordable only with an income over $80,000 per year. The average two-bedroom rental in San Diego is $1820 per month, affordable only with an income of $72,800 per year. ...

San Diego’s median income is approximately $73,000 for the city, which is consistent with our estimate that about half of San Diegans are unable to afford a minimally sized unit. A minimal unit would be priced at approximately $400,000 based on current San Diego home prices.

Translating the affordability challenge into wages, the Low Income Housing Coalition estimates that nationally, in order to afford a modest, two-bedroom apartment in the U.S., renters need to earn a wage of $19.35 per hour.

Good luck with that as minimum wage workers will be making $15 an hour 6 years from now and still will not be able to afford a modest two bedroom apartment, that is if rental prices do not go up in the meantime! Fat chance of that. SANDAG estimates that, as the production of new housing falls behind, only 6% of the housing that is being constructed is for people with low incomes. Obviously, there's more money to be made by building housing for upper income people.

The report continues: "As of 2013 there were approximately 120,000 extremely low-income families and only 20,000 affordable units available for them in San Diego. The pace of new construction for very low income, low income and moderate-income units is lagging severely behind the estimated need in San Diego ..." To say the least!

It doesn't have to be this way. The City has squirreled away millions of dollars in off budget funds which could be used for affordable housing and housing for the homeless. Besides that the City of San Diego owns numerous parcels of land on which affordable housing including housing for the homeless could be built. Since they're not recognizing the emergency situation that lack of housing represents, they are actually in violation of a state mandate, Senate Bill 2 from 2007, authored by Senator Cedillo which stated the following:

This bill would add emergency shelters to these provisions, as specified, and would add provisions to the housing element that would require a local government to identify a zone or zones where emergency shelters are allowed as a permitted use without a conditional use or other discretionary permit. ... By increasing the duties of local public officials, the bill would create a state-mandated local program.

That was 9 years ago and the City of San Diego has done nothing about it. This bill "create[s] a state-mandated local program." Still the City insists that emergency housing like the Tiny Homes project requires a Conditional Use Permit (CUP). No it doesn't! The corner of 17th Street and Imperial Avenue is identified on a 2006 general plan map as one of many locations that the city has deemed suitable for emergency shelters. Yet Arian Collins, supervising public information officer for the City of San Diego, said a conditional use permit (CUP) would be needed to put shelters on any of the sites identified in the map. Has he read SB-2 Cedillo which says that, for zones where emergency shelters are allowed, there is no need for a CUP? Are these people dumb or ignorant or they just don't care?

San Diego Has the Money to Build Affordable Housing

Civil engineer Katheryn Rhodes has identified several funds where the City, the County, the San Diego Housing Commission and Civic San Diego are hoarding cash that could be used for emergency shelters and/or affordable housing or even pay for Emergency Shelter Tents and Tenant Based Rental Assistance (TBRA) Housing Vouchers. There's $28.7 million in the Low and Moderate Income Housing Asset Fund (LMIHAF). There's also $259 million in long term assets that can be leveraged by using it as collateral and issuing bonds for much more. So why is the City contemplating issuing over a billion dollars in bonds for a new "Convadium" which, by the way is an architectural monstrosity with a convention center in the basement of a football field, when it is not doing its duty as mandated by the state of California to build emergency shelters for the homeless and affordable housing?

The Successor Agency (SA) to the Center City Development Corporation (CCDC) which facilitated the building of high rise condos in downtown San Diego by private developers has a lot of money at its disposal that's not being used that could be used to build affordable housing. According to Katheryn, they have $66,907,786 in unencumbered bonds plus $3,369,053 in reserves and $21,727,112 in other fund accounts. The Successor Agency cash can be used for any Capital Improvement Projects (CIP) and infrastructure projects including Affordable Housing with the approval of the City Council. Why won't the City Council take action?

The SA evidently is continuing the massive corruption of the CCDC that resulted in using HUD funds for building luxury condos that should have been used for building low income and affordable housing. CCDC President Nancy Graham was taking money from developers who were building the luxury condos tearing down Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels that housed many who have become homeless in the process.

Rusty Bee saw a direct connection between the tearing down of inexpensive housing units downtown, the augmentation of the homeless population and the investment buying of luxury high rises that weren't even occupied:

Twenty years in now, hundreds of downtown hotels razed making more people homeless, thousands of apartments and condos still empty, and when and where do the voodoo economics stop? The joke is that San Diego now has a million downtown condos that nobody is stupid enough to buy.

CCDC corruption which involved using money to renovate "blighted" areas to build luxury high rises instead of building affordable housing resulted in the termination of CCDC and "redevelopment." That's why there's a "Successor Agency" which in reality folks is the City Council which has turned over the winding down of CCDC activities to Civic San Diego. Now Civic San Diego has the cash to build affordable housing so why isn't it doing it?

The Capital Outlay Fund has a Cash Reserve Fund Balance of $125,729,000 as of June 30, 2015. When properties are sold, normally any cash money from the sale goes into the Capital Outlay Fund. The Balance in FY-2014 was $40,878,000. The balance in FY-2013 was $35,775,000. So it's building up with no purpose in mind. Money is just being hoarded.

The FY-2015 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) shows a Public Facilities Financing Authority (PFFA) Cash Reserve Fund Balance of $170,448,000. In FY-2014 it was $90,397,000, and in FY-2013 it was $93,902,000 so it too is building up with no purpose in mind. This does not even take into account JPA bonds. So there is plenty of money that could be used for affordable housing and emergency housing for the homeless. If San Diego wanted to get them off the streets, they could take action to do so tomorrow.

The Mayor's Budget

In his new budget released the other day, Mayor Kevin Faulconer did not even mention affordable housing, and gave only lip service to homelessness. There is something in there about housing 1000 homeless veterans, but what about the tens of thousands of homeless mothers and children? There's something in there about providing 24/7 access to restrooms for the homeless and getting serial inebriates off the street, but these are drops in the bucket compared to what needs to be done. The proposed FY 2017 budget calls for no expenditures from the Capital Outlay Fund which could be used for affordable housing. There is likewise no expenditure called for from the PFFA Funds. However, the budget does call for spending over $17 million on golf courses.

The San Diego Housing Commission (SDHC) budget, which is separate from the City's budget, can be found here. From their website it sounds like the SDHC is doing a lot about affordable housing. The question is are they doing all they can and are they using all available resources to do it?

This is from Civic San Diego's website which is also separate from the City's budget:

"Since CCDC's (now CivicSD) inception in 1975, more than 3,500 affordable housing units have been created in downtown neighborhoods, using redevelopment funds, and more than 450 units are in the pipeline. To date, $130 million in downtown redevelopment funds have been invested to produce affordable housing downtown. An additional $38 million have [sic] been committed for projects currently in the pipeline."

This all looks good on paper, but then why are there still so many homeless and the numbers are only getting larger? The City Council promptly approved Mayor Faulconer's budget, and it will take effect July 1.

San Diego Has Land It Could Build Affordable Housing On

Not only is the money available, land is available as well. The City of San Diego owns several parcels of land on which affordable housing could be built. But instead of doing that, the City wants to sell the land and place the proceeds in the Capital Outlay Fund, another Fund where money is accumulating with no declared purpose in mind.

The City's Real Estate Asset Department (READ) is supposed to ask the public if there are potential uses for surplus property owned by the City, but so far it has failed to do so. At the Committee for Smart Growth and Land Use meeting on February 16, 2016, the items on the agenda were all about selling off surplus parcels, not asking the public if there were alternative uses for them like building affordable housing.

The Legislature reaffirms its declaration that housing is of vital statewide importance to the health, safety, and welfare of the residents of this state and that provision of a decent home and a suitable living environment for every Californian is a priority of the highest order. The Legislature further declares that there is a shortage of sites available for housing for persons and families of low and moderate income and that surplus government land, prior to disposition, should be made available for that purpose.

Did they? Hell, no. For example, the property at the SE corner of Jamacha and Cardiff has been cleared for sale in accordance with California Government Code Section 54220. City departments were also notified and given an opportunity to retain the property. No City department has any current or foreseeable use for the property and the property has been determined to be excess to the City’s needs. So why isn't the property being used to build affordable housing? And there are tons of other city owned properties that the City doesn't need that could be used for this purpose as well.

Want to know more? Contact Mary Carlson, Asset Manager of READ. I couldn't find any contact information for her. Maybe that's intentional. Their website isn't very informative either. Nothing about all these properties they're trying to sell off to investors at fire sale prices.

There are currently 28 properties throughout the City up for sale. ...

READ is required by State Law to offer the property to internal and external agencies for a minimum 60 day period to see if they have interest in purchasing or leasing the property to provide low income housing, park and recreation or open space purposes, school facilities construction or use by a school district for open space purposes or for enterprise zone purposes if located in such a zone.

The READ files reviewed last December did not include a reply from the Parks and Open Space Department to the READ email sent July 16, 2013 initiating the for sale proposal. The noticing email basically said if we don’t hear from you in 60 days, we are proceeding with the sale.

It is getting pretty obvious that READ would rather offer the properties to rich investors and developers and pay realtor commissions than to have them developed for affordable housing or parks. By the way who picks the lucky realtors who have commissions falling into their laps like manna from heaven?

Murtaza Baxamusa, PhD, AICP, is the Director of Planning and Development for the San Diego County Building and Construction Trades Council Family Housing Corporation, said:

America’s Finest City has an ugly problem.

The homeless population in San Diego is among the four largest in the nation and getting worse, with over 8,700 people living without shelter. [Actually several times that amount; that's just the "official" count.] And while this kind of weather is rare in San Diego, it is not new, yet even after anticipating the storm for months and knowing the severity of our homelessness problem, there was marginal galvanization of resources by local government. Simultaneously, the city was able to commit hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds for supporting downtown development with an expanded convention center and a Chargers stadium that the NFL does not want, all of which will likely be built in the very neighborhood these people call home.

The 8700 people identified by the Point-In-Time-Count are not anywhere close to the total number of homeless people in San Diego City and County. They didn't count all the people sleeping in their cars nor the many that are staying with friends or couch surfing. Nor did they count the many that sleep "off the beaten track" in the many hidden gullies and the river bed. Nor did it count all those who slept in places unlikely to be found by the volunteers who did the counting who after all could not be expected to expose themselves to dangerous situations and environments.

Jeeni Crescenzo has come up with a more accurate count by studying the data for homeless children that each school district is required to maintain by the McKinney-Vento Act. There are some 22,000 children by this count and each has at least one parent with them. That's at least 22,000 families and 44,000 people! The City and the County don't want to acknowledge these figures. Jeeni said, “They are not being counted because single mothers, who for a myriad of reasons become homeless, will wisely prioritize their personal safety and the safety of their children over anything else. So while their male counterparts will often sleep “rough” on the streets or in the canyons, or compete for the few emergency beds in City and County shelters, 80% of the kids reported as homeless by the schools are spending their nights doubling up with friends and relatives.”

In San Ysidro 29% of the school children are homeless. They are often living in motels and junkyards.

For the last nine years, Medina has been the homeless liaison for approximately 1,408 students, or 29% of the 4,832 total enrolled in the San Ysidro School District, the largest student homeless population percentage-wise in the entire county. Her title has changed over the years— she is now the Student & Family Services Manager—but her work has never changed.

“It’s always trying to get those resources for our children. Getting them enrolled in schools, especially when they don’t have receipts or any proof of residency. I go out and do the home visits so I can see where they actually live and sign the documents at the school sites.”

Medina says she personally reaches out to at least 1,000 homeless students every year. “It’s ironic that I have to do this for our students who sometimes get kicked out, especially if they are in a hotel or they’re couch surfing. I have to vouch for them. It’s so ironic how I am advocating for children who are just like me."

Thanks to the McKinney-Vento Law, the definition of a homeless student includes more than just kids sleeping on the streets. Medina explains that homeless students are those who have been abandoned by their parents and are staying with extended family members, children who live in motels or abandoned trailers, and children who live in ‘doubled up’ housing.

Medina takes me on a driving tour in her truck, showing me where her students live and the challenges they face: in particular, eviction. San Ysidro has a high number of motels, approximately fifteen, where many homeless families live. With the high cost of rents in the area—a one bedroom averages $1,100 per month—living in a motel for months or even years is often cheaper. Medina knows of twelve families staying permanently at one of the San Ysidro motels.

Families who live in the junkyards, however, aren’t eligible. Located on the Otay Mesa hill where a large number of auto salvage & storage lots contain run down trailers, a few homeless families have found a way to rent them. The roads are unpaved and the trailers often don’t have running water or electricity. Families might use the nearby trucker station to take showers.

David Flores of Casa Familiar explains, “Different motels around San Ysidro are really functioning like some of those last resort shelter places. Very low rents, but very low amenities. Some of them without kitchens. I’m not sure if we can try to figure out a solution by having those private commercial property owners process something so that they can transform their places and have them become official shelters.” ...

In 2012 Casa Familiar had a vision to create two affordable housing complexes: Los Abuelitos, a 23-unit building that would serve seniors who are primary caretakers for their grandchildren, and ‘Living Rooms at the Border,’ a 10-unit building with flexible sizes from studios to four bedrooms.

Casa Familiar secured a grant from a New York non-profit called Parc Foundation, which would match any money given by the city one-to-one. When Casa Familiar presented the $3 million project to the City of San Diego’s Housing Commission, they wouldn’t approve the $1.5 million funding necessary, saying it was too expensive.

And yet as this series of articles has shown, $1.5 million is a paltry amount compared to the amount of funds that are hoarded in various City Funds that they don't want you to know about and which could be used for this and other projects.

The McKinney-Vento Law

The McKinney-Vento Education of Homeless Children and Youth Assistance Act is a federal law that ensures immediate enrollment and educational stability for homeless children and youth. McKinney-Vento provides federal funding to states for the purpose of supporting district programs that serve homeless students.

Defining Homeless Children

The McKinney-Vento Act defines homeless children as "individuals who lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence." The act provides examples of children who would fall under this definition:

Children and youth sharing housing due to loss of housing, economic hardship or a similar reason

Children and youth living in motels, hotels, trailer parks, or camp grounds due to lack of alternative accommodations

Children and youth living in emergency or transitional shelters

Children and youth abandoned in hospitals

Children and youth awaiting foster care placement

Children and youth whose primary nighttime residence is not ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation (e.g. park benches, etc)

Children and youth living in cars, parks, public spaces, abandoned buildings, substandard housing, bus or train stations

Migratory children and youth living in any of the above situations

Homeless with Severe Mental Illness

According to the 2015 Point-In-Time-Count, conducted by the Regional Task Force on the Homeless, more than 18 percent of the 8,500 homeless individuals living throughout San Diego County are estimated to be suffering from a Serious Mental Illness (SMI). At their January 26, 2016 meeting, the Board of Supervisors (BOS) unanimously approved a series of recommendations from our Health and Human Services Agency (HHSA) to immediately expand an array of behavioral health contracts to serve a limited number of homeless individuals experiencing a SMI and other co-occurring conditions.

Homeless individuals with a severe mental illness are the least likely among us to be able to secure and maintain housing without intensive assistance. They are also the most expensive, inappropriate users of emergency medical and law enforcement resources as well as often causing the most distress for the community. To change those circumstances, it is imperative that the County offer intensive intervention and complete wraparound services to those homeless individuals with a severe mental illness for whom we can locate acceptable housing through the cooperation of our housing partners.

The County must actively engage and partner with cities, organizations and agencies working with the homeless, as well as with landlords and housing officials to identify housing for these seriously ill people living on the streets, who, with behavioral health services would be able to function with shelter and treatment.

So why isn't there any "partnering" going on. There is money that's available that's not being spent except in "unincorporated areas"! This so-called "Project One for All" is so far a Project One for Not Very Many. They are currently only allowing the $170 million in the Mental Health Service Act (MHSA) Reserve funding to be used to provide housing for homeless in the unincorporated areas, and that is a crime and a shame. It should be used to house ALL Severely Mentally Ill (SMI) homeless. If this is County BOS Policy, then the Policy is discriminatory against urban SMI homeless. Right now only 1,184 SMI are provided housing in the unincorporated areas using the MHSA funds. All other SMI are either living with their families, on their own, living in cars and vehicles or on the streets.

There is a lot of money available to help the homeless that the City of San Diego is hoarding because it hasn't the will to help the homeless except by token efforts. See Part 1 for details. Stay tuned for Part 3 next week.